That's what I think happened here. One of those two was probably corrupted. It was leaving CONSTANT error messages for the last four days. Once I stole some new ones off my wife's MBP (we bought them at the same time) and replace those two in the Prefs folder it's fine. Not a single plist error message since. <del>

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a tried-and-true troubleshooting technique is to isolate the suspect .plist file(s) into another directory/folder, then launch the associated application to let it recreate the .plist file. you'll lose any customization you've made to the application, but then again, if it's corrupted you've lost those anyway. delete the isolated files when you're sure everything is working right. this technique is usually cleaner and easier than trying to find copies of the files.

You know. This is a pretty sweet little program. The guy's got paypal on his website (how smart is THAT?) so I think I'll toss him a contribution. What do you think is a fair for something like this? I never know how much to give these guys...

a tried-and-true troubleshooting technique is to isolate the suspect .plist file(s) into another directory/folder, then launch the associated application to let it recreate the .plist file. you'll lose any customization you've made to the application, but then again, if it's corrupted you've lost those anyway. delete the isolated files when you're sure everything is working right. this technique is usually cleaner and easier than trying to find copies of the files.

/guy

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Ah. I wasn't really sure what a plist file did... It sounds like any other preference file that rebuild's itself. Good to know... I was tempted to put the corrupt ones back in and see if OnyX picked them up.

You know. This is a pretty sweet little program. The guy's got paypal on his website (how smart is THAT?) so I think I'll toss him a contribution. What do you think is a fair for something like this? I never know how much to give these guys...

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just guessing, but i'd think he'd be happy with $5 and ecstatic for $10. you might check out tinker tool and tinker tool system before you settle on one though. tinker tool is free and basically does system tweaks. tinker tool system i think is $10 and seems a little more advanced than onyx, but you can try it with all features for a reasonable amount of time. basically i think it'd come down to which interface you like better.

just guessing, but i'd think he'd be happy with $5 and ecstatic for $10. you might check out tinker tool and tinker tool system before you settle on one though. tinker tool is free and basically does system tweaks. tinker tool system i think is $10 and seems a little more advanced than onyx, but you can try it with all features for a reasonable amount of time. basically i think it'd come down to which interface you like better.

/guy

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Dang. I'll take it. I think he deserves it just for being smart enough to have paypal.

And speaking of... I asked the guys at the pyTivo site if there was a way to donate and I never got any word back. Do they have a way to donate? After putting up with me, they deserve a few bucks.

Well I tried to donate but apparently the guy is in France and the paypal system he uses doesn't accept American $$$. I emailed the guy to see if there's a work around.

ETA: Oh, and I checked out Tinker Tool. That's a pretty cool program too. It seems to have a bit of a different purpose though. I could see the need to have both, really, and I may do that. Lots of very cool tweaks to the system that I wasn't aware of. That's for sure... I'm gonna keep it for a few days and see what else it can do.

Tinkertool is free. But there's a different app called Tinkertool System, that is more like Onyx in its purpose, that costs about $14 US. It's extensive, elegant -- and quite a bit more "explanatory" than Onyx. I just paid for it. It's seriously impressive.

the onyx developers are very good at updating it to keep up with os releases. i have no hesitation in recommending it, but, as with any such powerful utilities, beware (or at least research thoroughly) some of the more advanced features as you can outsmart yourself in an attempt to clean things up. i speak from bitter experience

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Can you tell us what happened in that experience please so that we may learn from your unfortunate mistake and know what to avoid?

i can't remember exact incidents, but my point was that you don't want to automatically delete something just because a utility recommends you do because it's a duplicate or flagged as corrupted. in a perfect world you'd do a backup before running some of the tools that go deeper into the system. of course this is less of an issue nowadays if you're running an active time machine volume.

and thanks for pointing out the differences between tinkertool and tts. i've been running tinkertool since it first came out and the guy who programs it is among the most conscientious to make sure no harm will come to your system. and i recently had a startup problem on a mac pro and tinkertool system has a command line diagnostics and repair tool that you can pause the startup to run.

Tinkertool is free. But there's a different app called Tinkertool System, that is more like Onyx in its purpose, that costs about $14 US. It's extensive, elegant -- and quite a bit more "explanatory" than Onyx. I just paid for it. It's seriously impressive.

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I'll check it out. Thanks for the lead. I need to get Skitch too, I could have really used that on this. Does it allow you to add text, as well as those cool arrows; directly in the App? I'm assuming it does, and that's gotta save a ton of time over the Command-Shift-4 and Photoshop method... Photoshop Arrows look pretty uninspired compared to the ones in Skitch...

<del>
I'm a night ranger too. Always have been. One reason I became self employed. Getting up too early ruins my whole day.

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funny ... since i devote like 110% of my energies to ensure i don't become self-employed! but i'm right there with you on the evils of early rising--i've worked night jobs for several decades now to ensure i didn't have to ever wake up early. [g]

funny ... since i devote like 110% of my energies to ensure i don't become self-employed! but i'm right there with you on the evils of early rising--i've worked night jobs for several decades now to ensure i didn't have to ever wake up early. [g]

/guy

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LOL. Hey different strokes for different folks. My wife just went to bed. I've got the whole place to myself. I just downloaded Skitch and am playing with it. I'm on vacation and I like staying up late.... ergo...